BLOGGER’S NOTE: I’ve been holding back a post about one of my most important writing tools, which has been sitting in draft form until a lull in posts would call it forward. Now that I’ve recovered from an illness that wiped me out for a few days, I’ve called up the draft to make important additions and alterations leading to this post.
I rely on note organizers and outlining programs to help me pull information together. For my introduction to such programs, you may wish to read my post Better Than A Shoebox, which explains the usefulness of these programs and the differences between single- and double-pane note organizers.
My favorite program of the lot is KeyNote, a powerful, yet free double-pane note organizer, certainly one of my top five writing tools. To unclutter my desktop and to facilitate program startup, I’ve placed the KeyNote icon into a desktop folder of Writing Tools. There are other, more elegant ways to accomplish this task, but it is so easy just to create desktop folders and to drag icons into appropriate folders.
Virtually everything you need to know about KeyNote is visible in the screenshot. Let’s study it carefully.
First, notice the outline tree on the left, the note on the right. The outline tree can dig down as many levels as you need, without the four-level limitation of some other outliners such as StoryView. Title lines in the outline – KeyNote calls them “nodes†– can be moved around at will, carrying with them everything under them.
The notes can be assigned different color backgrounds. Text within the note is fully configurable. Pictures and “objects†can be inserted within the text. Notes can be as long as necessary. Word and character count of each note appears at the bottom left, immediately changing as words are added and deleted. KeyNote offers an internal spell checker. Foreign text characters can be inserted from a special table. Notes within an outline can be merged to form a single document. One can insert bookmarks within notes to facilitate jumping around instantly. Notes can be exported as Rich Text Files, readable in almost every Windows word processor.
Providing even greater muscle, multiple outlines can be open via tabs running across the top of the content screen. In the screenshot above, you will discover SIX separate outlines relating to the content of this blog, including one titled TO DO itemizing additional steps and ideas that come to mind as I’ve been writing over the months.
Increasing the usefulness of the program, the outline panel in fact can be hidden so that KeyNote functions as a straight-forward RTF word processor. [For more, read my post about the virtues of the Rich Text Format.] Toggle the outline panel on and off with a click of the F11 key. In this mode, KeyNote offers sufficient power that it can serve as a writer’s word processor of choice for documents not requiring advanced formatting, such as headers/footers, footnotes, columns, or tables.
For me, KeyNote’s backup facilities make the program even more attractive. Readers of this blog will remember my emphasis on backing up one’s work. I’ve even written about my personal strategy, which involves as a critical step creating special folders for back up, prefixing the title with a numeral to force the folders to the top of the computer’s organizational structure. KeyNote works admirably into this schema, allowing the user to specify the destination of KeyNote’s own backups. And, astronishingly, KeyNote allows up to nine incremental backups, allowing one to “roll back” to an earlier version of specific files. I, of course, then take the additional steps of backing the backup folders onto external media [USB memory stick or a USB external hard drive, for example] and even upload it automatically to my online Mozy account.
KeyNote has been around for quite awhile, but it is often overlooked, especially by new writers. It is free, open-source software, developed by Marek Jedlinski, a self-trained Polish programmer. What few people realize is that Jedlinski’s professional training is in translation and American Literature. He’s a writer! No wonder that the program seems so responsive in the hands of another writer. Moreover, Jedlinski has been a teacher of American literature in the Department of American Literature and Culture at the University of Lodz. He also works as a free-lance translator, with a specialization in translation and testing of localized versions of major software, including Corel WordPerfect, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Encarta Interactive English Learning. He also translates novels, short stories, film scripts and other materials into Polish and serves as translator to several Polish literary magazines.
While Jedlinski spent years developing KeyNote, he stopped working on it in 2003. It has not been upgraded since. Many in the computer world have consequently forgotten about or turned away from KeyNote. For me, the program remains so powerful and so useful that I still call it my “workhorse.” There’s not a day that I don’t use it.
Fortunately, Jedlinski has not taken down his software website, though it too hasn’t been updated for several years. For more information, read the KeyNote homepage and be sure to click the Features and Screenshots links along the top, which will illustrate more functions within the program. These comments refer to the last update version 1.6.5. Disregard the comments about a forthcoming version 2.0.
A click on the Download link, takes you to the download page, where you will find yet another link to the download within the developer’s site. [If Jedlinski ever does take down his site, the download will likely be available at SoundForge.]
Once you’ve completed the download, I suggest you check the Add-ons Page; the link is on the Download page. Here you will wish to download the Help Files in Adobe Acrobat PDT format, as a reference. Also available for download are some sample KeyNote files, which the program itself can open. Several are very helpful, including the kn_helpknt, kn_handbook and keynote_faq zip files, which provide additional information about the program.
The Screenplay Template is definitely worth study. Open it in KeyNote and read the notes within the outline on the left AND in each of the tabs along the top. I find the kn_pim, kn_inventory and kn_adbk files less interesting, but worth a look anyway.
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There are many occasions when it is inconvenient to pull out a notebook or a word processor to take note of some significant, but fleeting ideas. A digital voice recorder can at such times save the day — and the ideas. This device is also nearly indispensible during in-person interviews.
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